The Dinosaur Lords

by Victor Milán

  Great yellow-brick warehouses and draft-animal stables dominated the compound’s western end. Here a certain note of worry permeated the talk among stable hands, warehouse workers, and drovers. Fear of the Grey Angel’s Emergence was alive and thriving. But business as usual predominated, with the usual rough humor as prevalent as dread.

  Pilar led Melodía into a great, round-arched opening in a sod-covered mound. Melodía followed, even more hesitantly than her stoop and cane commanded as her eyes adjusted to relative darkness. A walkway ran above a broad ramp down a tunnel that sloped beneath the palace proper and on to the city. Its barrel-vaulted ceiling rang with the bawling of nosehorns and fatties, horse snorts and whinnies, and profanity-laced shouts from drivers and loaders. Lanterns hung along the reinforced limestone walls created everlasting amber twilight. Immense fans powered by dinosaur-driven capstans aboveground kept fresh air moving up the tunnel, but on first entry the stink of piss and shit made Melodía’s eyes water.

  She quickly grew accustomed to it. It reminded her to cough conspicuously, which at least was useful. Their fellow pedestrians gave them a wide and fearful berth on the footpath.

  Ramp traffic, loaded wagons going up and empty ones going down, was already heavy. The rather steep grade took its toll on beasts climbing and brakes descending. But it was far quicker than going south overland and circling down from the promontory.

  Pilar turned into one of the numerous wide bays cut into the walls. Still conscientiously leaning on her cane, Melodía followed. Inside a pair of women dressed in wide straw hats and what appeared to be hemp sacks tended to a brown-dappled cream Centrosaurus hitched to a dray. As one looped the strap of a wooden feed bucket over its long nasal horn, the other dumped handfuls of oats from an open bag into a second pail. Nosehorn beaks couldn’t scrape all the tasty oats from the bottom; they’d occupy themselves happily for hours trying to get at every last flake with their tongues.

  When the strap passed before the nosehorn’s eyes, it tossed its frilled head and bleated alarm. The laborer hauled off and booted the beast in its near front shoulder with a skinny, brown-skinned leg.

  “Creators light a fire in your belly, you scratcher-beaked sack of shit!” she yelled in a familiar voice.

  “Lupe?” Melodía asked.

  The woman wheeled around. “Who the fuck wants to know?”

  Filth smeared her thin cheeks. Her eyebrows formed a solid line, which, Melodía realized, had been augmented with charcoal. As viciously sensitive as Lupe was about her tendency toward a unibrow, Melodía could think of only one person in all the walled town that was the palace brave or rash enough to do such a thing—

  “¡Puta estúpida!” the other laborer exclaimed. “You hang the strap from the fucking side. Don’t you know anything?”

  Lupe turned ominously toward Llurdis. Before the two could launch their fisticuffs, Melodía dropped her cane and flew forward to enfold them both in a desperate hug.

  “You’re doing this for me?” she said, turning left and right to kiss their grime-smudged cheeks.

  “Why the fuck else would we be fucking around with this nasty fucking—”

  “Yes, Día,” Llurdis said.

  “A servant woman named Claudia took my place.” The words gushed out like water from a broken jug. “I’m so worried about her.”

  “We know,” Llurdis said, disengaging herself. “We’re in on the plot, you know.”

  “Anyway, what do you care?” said Lupe, tugging at her arms. Melodía realized she was throttling the smaller girl and let her go. “She’s only a servant.”

  Pilar stepped forward. Melodía frowned. Was I ever that callow and callous?

  “She’s covered, Highness,” Pilar said. “Later.”

  “We’d best move with a purpose,” a feminine voice called from behind. “The longer we dither, the greater the chance Snowflake will take our heads.”

  Melodía spun. At the mouth of the bay, two incongruous figures stood side by side. One resembled a walking bag of grain, in a head-muffling shawl and a dress even more amorphous than Lupe’s and Llurdis’s. The taller was a scarecrow, draped in a smock made entirely of varicolored patches, with a ratty straw hat drooping around narrow pink cheeks and a grin that showcased an absent tooth.

  After a wide-eyed moment Melodía registered that the sunburn was cunningly applied rouge, and the “missing” tooth even more cleverly painted-out with lampblack.

  “Fina? Abi?”

  “Somebody’s got to drive,” said the normally elegant scion of Sansamour. “My father taught me any number of useful talents.”

  “Mine too,” Josefina Serena said.

  Melodía hugged them both fervently too. “But what’s that about Snowflake?” she asked.

  “Don Rodrigo’s not up to serving as actual Imperial Executioner anymore, you know,” Fina said.

  “Falk’s albino tyrant decapitated Don Pablo in Creation Plaza an hour ago,” Abigail Thélème said. “With Falk sitting astride him.”

  “What? Don—Mondragón?”

  Abi nodded.

  That was another breath-robbing blow. The Chief Minister had never been likable. Just like Sieur Duval, he always claimed that if people liked him, he wasn’t doing his job. Mondragón remained aloof to anything of less import than matters of state, and had always treated Melodía as an annoying little girl. But he had worked tirelessly to keep her and her sister safe. And most of all he had served her father with unflagging loyalty.

  If Papá will do that to his best friend— She let the thought go. She couldn’t stand to follow it a single step more.

  Pilar touched her arm. “Highness, we should go. The Condesa is right. Eventually our trick will be found out.”

  It took Melodía a heartbeat to recall that Abi had a title in her own right: the Countess of Silvertree. She turned to regard the wagon dubiously.

  “We put an oiled canvas down in the bed,” Llurdis explained. “When we get you and Pilar inside, we’ll put another over you and give you some pieces of bamboo to make sure you can breathe when we cover you up.

  “Pilar?”

  “I’m going with you, Princess,” Pilar said firmly.

  “What’s in the wagon?” Melodía asked, sniffing and wrinkling her nose. “It smells like the whole passageway. Except, uh, more so. Like—ahh—like—”

  “‘Shit’ would be the word you’re looking for,” Lupe said. “Horse and hornface both. Swept up nice and fresh off the ramp!”

  “We’re going out buried in—that?”

  “We have to hide you somehow to get you out of the palace,” Abi said. “Who’s going to look twice at a dinosaur-dray full of shit?”

  “Especially since a score just like it go out each and every day,” said Fina.

  Melodía set her lips. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t that bad. Herbivore manure smelled nowhere near as vile as a meat-eater’s.

  “Remember what awaits us here, Alteza,” Pilar murmured.

  She nodded. Moistening her lips, she began, “If only—”

  She found she couldn’t finish that either. Tears choked her off again. If only Fanny, my very best friend, had bothered to come see me off. Or Montserrat. Whom she suddenly found herself missing as fiercely as if they’d been parted for years already. Who knows when I’ll see either again? Or even if?

  With something like a tugging at the backs of her eyes Melodía realized she’d never see Meravellosa again, nor the beauty of the palace gardens. Nor, well, everything she’d known. Her knees began to buckle.

  She stiffened them sternly and shook her head as if to dislodge the traitorous thoughts. “Why are you doing this?” she asked, clutching Fina’s and Abi’s hands as the nearest points of contact available.

  Abi quirked a smile. “I love you, Día. But the fact is, life here in the Imperial Court’s pretty damn boring. Hardly any duels to speak of, and no poisonings at all. The big excitement occurs when some half-wit knights-errant take too much wine on board and get
into shouting matches at a banquet. And that usually just ends with the Tyrants dragging the contestants out in the yard and drubbing them groggy. There just isn’t enough at stake with the Fangèd Throne to draw serious intrigue.”

  Her blue eyes took on a bit of steel glint. “Until now.…”

  “We’re your friends,” Llurdis said. “We have to stand by you. And also what Abi said.”

  “Thank you,” Melodía said.

  So she kissed them all, and said good-bye to Llurdis and Lupe, and climbed into the wagon. Pilar came after.

  The two women lay facing each other. Pilar smiled reassurance. Lupe handed them both bamboo tubes to breathe through. She and Llurdis rolled an oiled canvas sheet over them.

  And then, with what struck Melodía as completely unnecessary enthusiasm, her noble ladies-in-waiting set about burying the Princess Imperial in shit.

  Chapter 48

  Cosechador de Ojos, Harvester of Eyes, Eye-taker—Several small species of Germanodactylus. Short-tailed, crested pterosaurs (fliers), some marine, some terrestrial; wingspan 1 meter, weight 1.25 kilograms. Widely hated for their habit of perching on the heads of wounded fighters and sailors adrift, and pecking out their eyes. Similarly sized to gulls, their avian rivals.

  —THE BOOK OF TRUE NAMES

  Gaétan reeled and fell from his saddle into the bushes west of the trail. Zhubin bleated alarm and bolted into the woods behind Rob and Karyl.

  Drawing a sword, the knight who had speared Gaétan plunged along the road after the routed Providentials. But others closed in as if to finish the fallen young man off.

  Roaring his furious battle cry—“Sod this for a game of soldiers!”—Rob wheeled Little Nell and booted her into motion, out of the brush and into the road.

  She didn’t have much time to gather speed. But speed wasn’t her strong suit at the best of times. Head down, she slammed the first rider’s horse in the barrel with the thick black boss of her horn. The horse screeched and fell thrashing. The rider jumped clear. He landed in a scandal-berry bush, but was up again in an eyeblink, waving his sword but none too certain on his pins.

  Rob caught a glimpse of Stéphanie dragging an unmoving Gaétan into the brush. He spun Nell right. She’d used up her forward momentum bulling down the courser. But even standing still she could turn with an alacrity startling in one so tubby.

  Even then he had to swing with all the speed he could muster to knock astray the spear another rider was aiming for Nell’s vulnerable belly. The rider plunged past.

  And suddenly Rob found himself surrounded by enemy horsemen.

  Dab hand though Rob was in a brawl, drunk or sober he was never so brash as to think he stood a chance fighting a single knight, much less a mob of heavy horsemen at once. Nuevaropa’s warrior class had little to do on any given day but train to fight. Except for hunting, feasting, and raping the occasional peasant, which they did after hours.

  He’d made use of his knowledge of the first principle of dinosaur combat: that the main weapon was the monster. And certain sure it was that neither training nor combat experience could adequately prepare the horse knights to face a mad Ayrish poet riding two tonnes of plump and outraged Einiosaurus.

  But while bucketheads could be dumb as dirt, especially about tactics—or unthinking, which fell out the same way—they were nothing if not resourceful when it came down to trading hard blows. The forest road was just wide enough to allow them to circle his powerful but ungainly mount like a harrier-pack. In a flash they were doing just that.

  Rob’s only recourse was to keep Nell turning rapidly this way and that. He warded blows with his shield as best he could and swung his axe lustily at any Brokenheart who ventured into range. But again his main defense was Nell, fending off the pack with horn and tail. Bold as they were, the knights were less willing to risk their precious mounts’ legs and bellies than their own. A dismounted montador wasn’t just at a disadvantage, he was a contradiction in terms, and not untainted with disgrace, to whatever small degree.

  But it was still a wasting game he played. Durable though she was, the hook-horn wasn’t used to this kind of exertion. Especially not at this intensity. And he suspected the stress of having enemies trying their best to kill her might drain her as fast as it did a human—and was draining Rob, right now. Sooner or later, she would fatally tire. Or he would.

  And like the savage Pyroraptors they were emulating, the riders knew how to wait and watch for the opportunity to dart in and snatch a mouthful of their prey. Rob felt an impact beneath his shoulder blade as a spear struck his tough backplate. The armadón hide held. He wheeled Nell counterclockwise in time to glance his axe off the helmet of the rider who had tagged him, briefly staggering him in the saddle of his horse.

  But a sword-stroke hit the cuisse protecting Rob’s right thigh, slipped off, and gashed the leg right behind the knee through his silk trousers. The slice was only skin, inflicted by the arming-sword’s tip as Rob kept Nell turning; a blunter longsword would never have cut him at all.

  But in a fight with blades, the moment you got cut, you started dying. Even a tiny trickle of blood would weaken a body with shocking rapidity. You wouldn’t bleed to death from it, but it would slow you. And that would get you slashed again and again, until you did bleed enough to fail.

  Rob knew that from observing knight fights. He himself steered clear of them as best he could, preferring to fight with a weapon that gave him some working room, like a table leg or a chair. Or best of all his weapon of choice: a clean pair of heels.

  But the difference with a sword and spear fight was that those weapons could easily inflict a killing blow—which was surprisingly hard to do with a knife.

  Seeing blood, the Brokenhearts pressed harder. As Rob fought with increasing desperation to keep further blades out of his body, he became aware of shouts and screams from right nearby, the whinnying of horses and the clangor of steel on steel. He could spare no attention for that right now. This fight was his all—or nothing.

  That obnoxious observer who lived in his skull with him, and mocked him like an eye-taker from a gallows pole, told him those battle sounds boded badly for his prospects—of rescue, or if he miraculously escaped on his own. Those who had hidden in the woods relied primarily on their bows and ambush. Few wore armor better than their shirts. They stood even less chance in a hand-to-hand fight against mounted knights in mail than Rob did.

  Pain caught Rob’s breath briefly in his throat as a spear found seam between breast-and-back on his left side. He felt steel hit a rib and grate. Then he bellowed like a scorched nosehorn bull as a sword raked his right cheek.

  Nell was slowing. But her master’s cry revived her. She responded to his knee press as if fresh to the fight, wrenching the front half of her body right while flinging her hips and tail left to add momentum.

  The knight who had cut Rob was a fresh-faced young buck with blond hair darkened and plastered against his chin by the sweat from his open burgonet, and a rampant raptor of some sort in green on a silver field on his tabard. Emboldened by drawing blood, he had kept in close to his prey. He had his longsword raised one-handed for a killing blow.

  But Rob’s retaliation was already humming down in furious overhand. Wanda hit the helmet just to Rob’s left of its low crest, split steel and skull clear to an astonished green eye.

  A shock almost as great as the physical one that traveled up his arm punched Rob from inside to out. I killed a knight! he realized. Exultation and revulsion alike surged in him. He felt a sense of soaring triumph—and of having committed a profanation.

  But he let none of that stick him immobile. That would kill him just as dead, and just as fast. This wasn’t the first man he’d slain. Just the first noble. Though he would surely see that wide eye staring at him in his dreams as blood flooded it, he knew. If he lived, of course.

  But to do that he must first free his axe, which was stuck tight in the young fool’s head.

  Hollering wordlessly,
with outright panic rumbling like lava from his belly both ways, Rob drove Nell against the horse’s shoulder. Raising a boot from his stirrup, he put it against the rider’s mailed chest to brace the flaccid corpse and yanked the axe free with a spasm of effort.

  Another spear hit him in the back. This one actually went through the tough, pebbled nodosaur hide to sting his left shoulder blade.

  Nell’s turn widdershins was perceptibly slower. The spearman opted to pull out his spear as he danced his horse back away from the big swinging head and brutal down-hooked horn. But another Brokenheart closed in from Rob’s right. His arming-sword had already begun the stroke that might or might not sweep Rob’s head from his short, thick neck, but would most certainly kill him.

  Giving his last, best, futile effort to bring his axe around in time to knock the sword astray, Rob saw something flicker down over the rider’s wide, dark eyes and sadistic grin. Then the knight whipped right backward over his saddle’s high cantle. Beyond his horse’s speckled white rump, Rob caught a glimpse of the Providential farm youth who had noosed the Brokenheart ’round the neck with a catchpole. He grinned even wider than the knight had as he hauled his catch thrashing down into the brush and out of sight.

  No enemies remained in view to Rob’s left, down the forest road. All he saw that way was the backs of the last of the routed army. He turned a now-wheezing Nell clockwise once more.

  A spear darted for his face. He knocked it half a meter past his right cheek with his shield rim. Then he lowered the round shield, just enough to see over the top.

  He faced a trio of horsemen, right where the trees began to close in over the road. His heart dipped momentarily as beyond them he saw still more riding strung out down the blue-clad slope toward the woods. They ignored the darts and javelins flung at them by the handful of mounted scouts who buzzed around their flanks to the left and right as thoroughly as they did their taunts.